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ANOTHER DEM WANTS TO TWEAK REFORM LAW— Rep. Charles Gonzalez has re-introduced a bill that would repeal section 3204(a) of the reform law, which eliminated the MA open enrollment period in the first three months of the year. Gonzalez proposed the bill Friday and already has 29 co-sponsors, a bipartisan mix of lawmakers, including many from Texas. He introduced the same bill at the end of the 111th Congress. Sen. Bob Casey had a similar bill last session, too.

Good Monday morning. Congress is gone for two weeks and Washington finally got the memo that it’s spring. The tulips are in bloom at the Capitol. The pic http://twitpic.com/4l9cxj And congrats to the Senate HELP Committee’s Joe Brenckle. His new baby – Schuyler – came home from the hospital on Friday. The pic http://politico.pro/fBTsDk

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HAPPENING TODAY: DECISION ON CUCCINELLI’S SCOTUS PETITION LIKELY— The Supreme Court is expected to put out a list of accepted or denied cases at 10 a.m. today. We could see Virginia’s suit on that list (or the justices could defer a decision). PULSE still expects Virginia to be told to let the case travel the normal course through the 4th Circuit.

STAFFERS BRIEFED ON BROKER BILL— NAHU, Families USA, HCAN and consumer advocate Tim Jost briefed Democratic congressional staffers on the broker bill last Thursday. While Rep. Mike Rogers’s (R-Mich.) bill to remove brokers fees from the MLR has picked up steam and support in recent weeks (Sen. Mary Landrieu voiced her support on Thursday at the Big I conference), Jost tells PULSE: “Nobody’s seen the CBO cost estimate on this yet, and if they do it right, it’s going to be significant and that’s going to lead people to think long and hard whether this is an industry that taxpayers can afford to subsidize right now.”

FIRST IN PULSE: BPC PUTS A FOCUS ON HEALTH IT— The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Health Project plans to announce today that Janet Marchibroda will co-chair its new Health IT initiative. Marchibroda is the founding CEO of the eHealth Initiative and formerly of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS. The group will start with a landscape report, due to be released in early June, on how health IT can help different areas of health reform – delivery system reform, state exchanges, the workforce and rural areas.

--The report will be the first out of the BPC’s health project since it was announced. It’s also one of the few areas of health reform with bipartisan support. “Health IT has long been supported by both sides of the aisle,” Marchibroda tells PULSE. Still, “Very little has been done to actually flesh out how do we actually align [health reform and health IT].”

HAPPENING TODAY: CUE THE POST-BUDGET POLITICS— House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi heads down to Florida to discuss how the Republican budget would affect Medicare. She’ll be speaking at a senior center in Orlando with Reps. Corrine Brown and Kathy Castor.

--Just a few minutes after Friday’s vote, both the DSCC and the NRCC put out a slew of releases targeting members in key districts. The POLITICO Pro story http://politico.pro/hAn1MG

HSA BILL GETS SLEW OF NEW SUPPORT— Rep. Erik Paulsen’s bill to repeal the health law’s restrictions on payments to HSAs, FSAs and medical savings accounts got a slew of new co-sponsors on Friday. Twenty-seven Republicans signed on to co-sponsor the bill, including Reps. Kevin Brady, Michael Burgess and Mike Pence. The bill now has 73 co-sponsors in total.

TRANSPARENCY REG OUT ‘VERY SOON’— A regulation requiring health plans to create a uniform explanation of coverage will be coming in the “very near future” CCIIO’s Karen Pollitz told the Association of Health Care Journalists on Friday. So soon in fact, that she had to take a phone call about the reg during her talk and zip back to Washington to work on it. PULSE caught up with her on the way out: “We’ve been working for almost a year on this with a really terrific working group at NAIC, insurers, regulators, consumer advocates, language experts – to help boil all of this fine print down into something that people can understand and use.”

NFIB: ‘GET THE CREDIT IF YOU CAN’— Today is the drop dead deadline for filing taxes, and NFIB has sent a page-long memo, titled “The Incredible Shrinking Small Business Tax Credit,” which cites six ways the health insurance tax credit for small businesses will be A.) very hard to get and B.) not all that helpful anyway. But at the very end of message, this caveat: “Despite our concerns with the structure of the credit and the criticisms written above, NFIB urges any small business to consult with an accountant to determine whether filing for the credit is a good idea. If they determine that filing is beneficial, then by all means the business should file and get whatever dollars the law will offer.” As the only association that has signed on with 29 states to legally challenge the health care law, one Democratic strategist send of the memo: "708 words disparaging the tax credits followed by an admission that they help. Small businesses are ill-served by this kind of thing. The fact of the matter is, these credits are delivering real relief nationwide.” The POLITICO Pro story http://politico.pro/eaAa85

CONSUMER GROUPS WANT FTC TO LOOK INTO MERGER— Consumer groups are calling on the FTC to ramp up its investigation of the 2007 merger of CVS and Caremark – and community pharmacists couldn’t be happier about that. A National Community Pharmacists Association official said Friday he is encouraged by the letter penned by Consumers Union and other stakeholders. The groups are complaining about practices by the company, which the community pharmacists have long warned the FTC about. The POLITICO Pro story http://politico.pro/glEcmE

CMS ENDS MEDICAL HOME DEMO— An eight-state demo to test the patient-centered medical home delivery system model was quietly canceled by CMS last week. Primary care groups lobbied hard to get the demo authorized in a 2006 law, but offered muted reactions to its cancellation, which was tucked into the bottom of a posting on the CMS website. The POLITICO Pro story http://politico.pro/es2H9t

FIRST IN PULSE: SHOPPERS DON’T KNOW ABOUT FOOD SAFETY LAW— A new Deloitte consumer food and product safety survey due out today finds that 69 percent of consumers say the government should be responsible for communicating food product recalls and a similar percentage are not familiar with the new Food Safety Modernization Act. Another 73 percent of consumers are more concerned about the food they eat now than they were five years ago. The study http://bit.ly/eKufHf

VIEHBACHER STAYS AT PHRMA— Sanofi-aventis’s Christopher Viehbacher will remain the board chairman of PhRMA, the trade group said Friday at its annual meeting in New Jersey. Eli Lilly and Co.’s John Lechleiter was elected chairman-elect and Celgene Corp.’s Robert Hugin was elected board treasurer.

The president-elect of the American College of Surgeons, Dr. Lazar Greenfield, is resigning because of a controversial Valentine’s Day editorial printed in the organization’s journal, The New York Times reports. http://nyti.ms/hzBwDu

One manufacturer is moving to relieve the critical shortage of a chemotherapy drug for leukemia patients, WSJ reports. http://on.wsj.com/hUDin8

WSJ has the details on the $20 billion deal Johnson & Johnson may make to buy Synthes, a medical device manufacturer. http://on.wsj.com/fAY2sa (Subscription required.)

A yearlong Justice investigation of New Hampshire’s services for the mentally ill finds the state woefully lacking, the Nashua Telegraph reports. http://bit.ly/fgTsJC

Rep. Nan Hayworth, a freshman Republican from N.Y., tells the American Medical Group Association that the price Obama may pay for getting the House to raise the debt ceiling is repeal of “major parts” of the ACA, Modern Healthcare reports. http://bit.ly/gaXhMz (Registration required.) Hayworth is the wife of AMGA Chair Dr. Scott Hayworth.

Ezra Klein writes a back-to-the-future column, recalling how well R’s played the ACA’s Medicare Advantage cuts against D’s in the 2010 cycle. The WaPo opinion column: http://wapo.st/fnWQFz

Goozner also has an argument that Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan amounts to a death tax, since elderly would likely spend much greater portions of their estates at the end of life if the reform went into effect. http://gooznews.com/?p=2750

James Fallows of The Atlantic riffs on the death tax idea: http://bit.ly/f6jp3Q
Paul Abrams, writing on the Huffington Post, wins the pun prize for this headline on a column taking apart Ryan’s plan: “Saving Medicare from ‘Private-izing’ Ryan.” http://huff.to/dKYMOV